I am still struggling with setting up the AWS instance for my lesson 1. My problem is that Python can not find the utils module to import.

No module named utils

The '~.nbs' directory is just empty.

And I suspect this is caused by incorrect AWS setup. Here's what I have done:1. I put two .sh files (setup_p2.sh and setup_instance.sh) into my home directory first2. then I ran the bash setup_p2.sh to create the instance.

Am I doing anything wrong here? Maybe I should use the aws-alias.sh file too?

Hey guys!I dont know, if it is a right topic, but how much money do you spent on servertime in order to complete the course?I have only around 100~200$ avaiable, and woundering is it even worth to strat the whole thing...

My first month of the course was about $42 (U.S.), but I've only done the first 3 lessons. The most expensive part (unless you forget to shut off your p2!) is the EBS storage volumes which are created by default at 128GB. That was about half the expense.

So if cost is a concern (and when isn't it, I mean really!) you can edit the t2 and p2 setup files to create smaller volumes to start with. There is almost no way to make them smaller, but they are easy to make bigger, so if you really get into it and need more space you can increase the size with a couple clicks.

EDIT 4/24/17Evidently the Amazon Image Snapshot expects a partition of 128GB so you can't just edit the setup.sh. Sorry for misleading folks. I would still recommend finding a way to start with less disk space if you can figure it out. ~~Look in the setup_instance.sh file and find the line ...{ \"VolumeSize\": 128... and edit that to a smaller number. You get 30 with the free tier total -- so if you setup both t2 and p2 at 15 you won't go over. Of course I don't know if you can fit everything in 15 GB. ~~End EDIT

One other trick is that the instances are only billed in full hour increments each time you start and stop. So if you start an instance run for 10 minutes, stop it, start it again, run for another 10 minutes, stop it again, you will be charged for two hours. So don't do that!

Here are my recommendations based and things I wish I had known given my experience and my budget.

Edit volume size to 30, increase it if needed later.

Only set up a p2.xlarge. I ran t2 for 14 hours and p2 for 16 hours. To me it probably would have been worth $11.20 to just have the one instance to manage and it would have saved on other costs.

The elastic IP will add about $6 to your bill

Don't start and stop your instance unnecessarily (but don't forget to turn it off when you aren't using it)

Some of the simpler examples like mnist are pretty reasonable on a laptop or desktop CPU, play with that to explore the layers and different model features if you can.

Oh and yes, IT IS WORTH IT!@jeremy and @rachel are brilliant and sharing practical real world experience and knowledge. They community here is awesome and so helpful. If you want to learn about this field which is shaping our world and future, then this is the place to do it!

If you really want to slash your costs on AWS, consider spinning up spot instances as shown in this thread. I've been paying $0.15-0.20 per hour instead of $0.90 for on-demand instances. You can also dispense with the elastic IP if you find you don't need it and want to pay less.

Also note that you'll need to use a different AMI when setting up your EC2 instance with a smaller EBS size. If you do a search in this forum you should be able to find some more info on the topic.